Solace
by Laura Schiller
Summary: Major spoilers for "Star Trek: Picard" episode 5, "Stardust City Rag". Seven may be fighting against the odds, but she's not fighting alone.


Solace

By Laura Schiller

Based on: _Star Trek: Picard_

Copyright: CBS

/

When Bjayzl's body exploded in a shower of red mist, Seven didn't have time to feel anything but a dull sense of accomplishment. When the second wave of security guards came bursting through the doors of the empty nightclub, she was resigned. All things considered, she thought, firing back at them with a phaser in each hand, there were worse ways to go.

When the transporter beam caught her, however, and beamed her into a small shuttlecraft from one moment to the next, with an all-too-familiar figure at the helm, all that merciful indifference was stripped away.

She fell to her knees, gasping, the phasers clattering to the floor.

"Are you hit?" Chakotay called over his shoulder.

"I'm … fine," she managed to say.

"Take copilot." He gestured to the chair next to his. "In case they start chasing us."

He punched in a course as fast and as far from Freecloud as possible.

Seven picked herself up – her hands were trembling, when had that happened? – and hauled herself over to the co-pilot's seat, where she forced herself to concentrate on the screen in front of her.

It was an old shuttle, of an age with the _Delta Flyer_. If she unfocused her eyes, she could almost believe they were back in the Delta Quadrant and _Voyager_ would be waiting for them just a few light years away. Except that Chakotay's hair had gone gray, and instead of his uniform, he was wearing the same dark, sturdy, nondescript clothes favored by the Fenrys Rangers, like her.

She hadn't wanted him to follow her when she'd joined the Rangers thirteen years ago. _It's not you I'm following_, he had retorted. _It's justice. _Given the choice between staying in Starfleet and defending small colony worlds who needed it, he would make the same choice every time.

"How did you find me?" was the first coherent thing she could say.

"Your calling card." He referred to the tracking beacons she gave out only to people she trusted, one of which she had given Admiral Picard earlier that day. Chakotay's beacon was tucked into the controls of his shuttle. "It was registering weapons fire nearby, and I didn't want to miss the fun. What were you doing down there?"

"I killed Bjayzl."

"Ah."

Neither Chakotay's face nor his tone showed any sign of judgment. He had known the Freecloud criminal too, in the days when she was posing as a Ranger. He knew that she had torn out Icheb's Borg implants to sell them on the black market, that by the time Seven had found him, the young man had been too damaged to save, and all Seven could do was grant her son a quick death.

Chakotay also knew, better than anyone in the galaxy, how Seven had suffered afterwards, still did, and always would.

"With the help of former Admiral Picard," Seven added.

"_Enterprise_'s Picard? You met him?"

"He helped me find her. Although … " She remembered the kind, respectful way the old man had nodded to her before they parted ways. She did not feel guilty for killing Bjayzl – it had to be done, that was all – but still, she was glad Picard wouldn't find out. "I let him believe I'd spare her."

"Why?"

Chakotay spared a short glance from his console to meet her eyes. She quickly looked away.

"He told me I would squander my humanity by killing her," she confessed.

"Sounds something Kathryn would say."

"Precisely."

Neither of them had heard from Admiral Kathryn Janeway for a long time, at least not through official channels. Unlike the two of them, Starfleet was in her blood, and no political disagreement was strong enough to make her leave it. Like Picard, Janeway didn't approve of the Fenrys Rangers. Having never forgiven herself for some of the laws she'd broken in the Delta Quadrant, she took a dim view of others doing the same thing.

Still, Janeway would always be the voice of Seven's conscience. And when Picard sounded so much like her, Seven couldn't bring herself to disappoint him.

"He said," she added, "That there is no solace in revenge."

"And what do you think?"

Seven's mind reeled with so many memories, most of them horrible, that it took her a long time to answer.

Her hands around Bjayzl's throat. Picard playing his role a little too well, recommending his Borg prisoner to be diced up. Bjayzl's smug smile. Icheb's blood on her hands. Icheb's body going limp in Seven's arms. Bjayzl's blood spraying the floor of the nightclub.

"There is for me," she answered finally. "Because Bjayzl will never do to any woman's child what she did to mine."

Her voice betrayed her, however, by breaking into a sob.

Quietly, as was his way, Chakotay took hold of the armrest on her chair and moved it closer to his. Keeping one hand on the controls, he offered his other hand to her.

She held on tight.

This, not revenge, was her true solace. She didn't know if she deserved it, but she needed it. Her life, as she'd told Picard, could be pointless and exhausting, but the only thing worse would be giving up.

It was for Chakotay's sake, and for Icheb's, that she carried on.


End file.
